Design your poster from afar. The point of posters is to catch people's attention from far away. After you initially design your poster, get 10 to 20 to 30 feet away from it and see if it catches your attention. Is the type big enough? What about the photo(s)? Can you see what it is in the photo from far away? Also walk past the poster to see how it looks from the sides. Does it draw you toward it?
Balance your space. Don't feel like you need to fill every inch of your poster with something. Use ?white space? ? the space that isn't filled with graphics or text as much as needed. A cluttered poster ? one with so much text and graphics that people don't know what to look at first ? is a turn off. Who wants to read all that text while they're walking by? If they don't know where to start reading, they won't start at all.
Use contrasting colors. Use bright colors against a dark background and dark colors against a bright background. Also use complementary colors that are pleasing to the eye.
Decide on the purpose of your poster. If you start designing without knowing your purpose, you'll end up with a confusing message. If you are using the poster to introduce a new product, don't confuse people by also mentioning all of your other great products.
Use different sized posters. You can print posters in almost any size you want. They can be small, for smaller areas like bulletin boards or three times the normal size for bigger areas. You can even use different sizes to create a design on a bulletin board ? use two smaller ones to flank one larger poster in the middle.
Let people take your poster with them. Okay, not the entire poster, but you can have your printer perforate the bottom of your poster to create stubs that people can tear off and take with them. You've probably seen this technique used on flyers, and there's no reason why you can't do this with posters. Include your name, logo and contact information on the stubs so people can easily contact you.
Add unique features. You can easily add pockets to your posters that hold business cards or brochures for people to take away.
